The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Fierce battles on the cards

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Thursday, Dec 25, 2008
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Fierce battles on the cards

P.K. Ajith Kumar

MANGALORE: As the National ‘A’ chess championship moves to its second half, after Wednesday’s rest day, the big question is if anybody could stop Surya Shekhar Ganguly from claiming an unprecedented sixth title in a row.

The supremely confident young man from Kolkata has scored 4.5 points from six games at the Karnataka Bank Auditorium, hasn’t lost a game yet, already met most of his tough rivals including the second-seeded Parimarjan Negi, and has looked better-prepared in opening than anybody else. He has often surprised his opponents in the opening itself.

“But I am not thinking of winning the title; I never did during my last five campaigns at the National ‘A’,” Ganguly said. “I just take one game at a time.”

Parimarjan Negi was expected to give him the stiffest competition. And he has, so far. With another six rounds left, the 15-year-old from Delhi shares the lead with Ganguly, but he has played a game more (Every player gets a bye because of the last-minute withdrawal from the tournament of G.N. Gopal).

When the top two seeds met in the second round, Ganguly had triumphed. Of his four GM rivals, he has only Praveen Thipsay left to play.

After the seventh round, K. Ratnakaran is in the second place with four points, but the Keralite will have to play better than his seventh seeding if he wants to repeat his success of the previous edition, where he was a surprise second. Half-a-point behind Ratnakaran are the fourth seed J. Deepan Chakravarthy and S. Satyapragyan.

The next six days should see some fierce battles for places in the Indian team for the various international tournaments and it would also be interesting to see if any GM norm is made, though the chances for that look slim at the moment.

Thursday’s pairings (eighth round): K. Ratnakaran 4 v Surya Shekhar Ganguly 4.5; P. Konguvel 3 v Sriram Jha 2; Praveen Thipsay 2.5 v J. Deepan Chakravarthy 3.5; M.S. Thejkumar 3 v Akshayraj Kore 3; S. Satyapragyan 3.5 v Parimarjan Negi 4.5; M. Shyam Sundar 3 v B. Adhiban 2.5.

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